Dr. Ralph H. Major joins the KU School of Medicine faculty, becoming both professor and chairman of the Department of Pathology, and launching a career “that can never be measured in terms any more precise than immense or profound.”

The Chancellor is the chief executive officer of the University of Kansas, overseeing campuses in Lawrence, Kansas City, Overland Park and Wichita in addition to research and educational centers in Topeka, Hutchinson, Parsons and elsewhere in the state.
Dr. Douglas A. GirodJuly 1, 2017-Present

Bacteriologist Marshall A. Barber, whose invention of the micropipette will enable him to conclusively prove the germ theory of disease, begins his 17-year teaching career at the University of Kansas and the KU School of Medicine.

Carl L. Becker, author of the much-reprinted essay “Kansas” and one of the central figures in the development of the nature of historical inquiry, begins teaching his first European history class at the University of Kansas.

The forerunner of the University of Kansas School of Nursing begins its first day of classes under the direction of Pearl Laptad, the first of three early and influential nursing education leaders at KU.

Dr. Ralph H. Major joins the KU School of Medicine faculty, becoming both professor and chairman of the Department of Pathology, and launching a career “that can never be measured in terms any more precise than immense or profound.”

Lawrence widow Leonora Ricker Hollingbery dies, leaving a last will and testment that calls for the establishment of a low-cost residence for women that will become an ad-hoc addition to KU's student housing stock for more than two decades.

Evangelist Billy Sunday, nationally known for his passionate support of prohibition and revivalist crusades, congratulates Kansans for being the “least illiterate” people in the country in a speech to more than 1,800 KU students and faculty and members of the Kansas Editorial Association at Robinson Gymnasium.

With no other candidates willing to take the job, Dr. Harry R. Wahl, professor and department chairman of pathology, is named acting dean of the KU School of Medicine, inaugurating a 24-year period that will become known as “The Wahl Years.”

Genevieve Harman, whose undergraduate efforts on behalf of housing cooperatives will result in a KU women’s co-op residence being named in her honor, albeit with the occasional misspelling, begins her first day of classes.

Dr. Logan Clendening, a leading medical historian, a newspaper columnist appearing in 383 newspapers, and author of one of the best selling medical books of the 20th Century (The Human Body), dies in Kansas City.

At the age of 32, Dr. Franklin D. Murphy – a son both of KU and of a Medical School “founding father” – agrees to become dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine, the youngest man in the nation to hold such an office.

KU comes into uncontested control of one of the world’s foremost ornithological libraries—its first major acquisition of rare books—when the Kansas Supreme Court rules that an agreement signed more than four years earlier by Ralph Ellis, Jr. is valid as a will.

Pharmacology professor Dr. W. Clarke Wescoe becomes dean of the University of Kansas School of Medicine and director of the KU Medical Center, ushering in a period of “momentous change and daring innovation” at 39th and Rainbow Boulevard.

Dr. Hilden Gibson, a popular political science professor and strong supporter of KU’s cooperative housing movement, unexpectedly passes away, inspiring the men of 1614 Kentucky Street to name their co-op in his honor.

Henry Fortunato, the creator of kuhistory.com, entered the world January 8, 1956, on Long Island, New York. Serendipity had him become a resident of Kansas, a student of KU and, ultimately, the narrator of this popular institutional history.

Commander Ronald E. Evans becomes the first KU alumnus in space when he and two other astronauts of Apollo 17 blast off from Cape Kennedy on NASA’s sixth and final 20th century manned mission to the moon.

In the first of two stunts that would enter into campus legend, KU art student Dan Wessel, who preferred to be known as “The Great Wesselini” and similar monikers, attempts to fly his homemade glider over Memorial Stadium by rolling down a 32-foot ramp north of the Campanile.

More than 200 “internationally known scientists from Europe, Japan and the U.S” descend on the Lawrence Holiday Inn Holidome for a symposium on “Directed Drug Delivery” held in honor of KU professor Takeru Higuchi, the “father of physical pharmacy.”

1936 University of Kansas graduate John B. McLendon was enshrined for a second time into the Naismith Hall of Fame on Friday evening, September 9, 2016. Originally enshrined as a conributor, McLendon was inducted as a coach along with 9 other inductees into the class of 2016.

Del Shankel passed away Thursday, July 12, 2018 at the age of 90. Shankel was a chancellor emeritus and professor emeritus of the University of Kansas after a career dedicated to the university. (Click title to read more.)